Justice Katju rips apart Indian media

[ravishingravi]

I don't think you understand the crux of what is being said. For what's worth, people like drugs too, they are going to get that in one way or the other so why not sell it to them officially. If you won't sell it someone else will .... We are talking about ethics and morals, how something as powerful as media, which can shape what we think, should get its priorities right I am not really concerned about trival stuff like having astrology on TV. My point is to have the Indian media with more substance and play a vital role by giving more weightage to key issues esp. when India is in a transitional phase .... for example: if in the main news programs, if you are discussing a wax statue of an actor something is wrong, it should be in a side section Also reporting is about doing proper research and not airing to sensationalize the news to get more TRP There are many avenues to make money. Something like media, in a country like India needs to get its priority right and help educate and bring out the issues the people face. From being an extention of bollywood, it needs to turn into a game changer for India and Indians This is not just about the TV channels but also print

Endorse this 100%. I dont believe in todays day and age, it is really a question of catering to what you want. The idea is push marketing. Creating the demand. I don't believe 20 years back US needed a FOX news. But if you have the money, the reach and the product, you can shove it down people's throat and make them used to it. Of course, it helps if the seed of the idea is already implanted in people's minds. For instance US electorate is always been polarized. Indian public love cricket and movies. So, you have something to work with there.

[vayuu1]

I honestly believed media in 80's and 90's was more mature and sensible,god I miss those day ,these wanna be journo's are real P.I.T.A

[vvvslaxman]

If people dont care about them, why do they get the viewership that they do? .

THat is the problem. First you show porn.. you get lot of audience.. then you cannot say people want porn. In India there is excessive importance to entertainment much more than sports or anything else. Also standard of print media has gone really bad.

[Sachin=GOD]

Of Film Stars And Farmers

The division between serious and trivial themes for news is often a false one Sanjay Srivastava Press Council chairman Justice Markandey Katju is angry because he thinks that there are far more serious issues that should occupy the front pages of newspapers than the death of Dev Anand. This is an odd reaction from someone who, it would appear, does not subscribe to the view that legal experts should stick with commenting on legal issues. In a similar manner, the media cannot, and must not, be shackled to prescriptive reporting regimes that exclusively focus on ‘serious’ issues. There were media regimes that followed this practice but they are not looked upon as the apogee of creative journalism. The state-run media in India and the former Soviet Union spent vast resources on the most mind-numbing reports of national progress and human good: are there many who look upon that earlier era of statist dumbing-down of the media with admiration? The ‘seriousness’ of what belongs to the front page is a matter of how an issue is covered. It is just as possible to trivialise farmers’ suicides through shallow reporting as it is to provide deep insights into social and cultural attitudes through analysing the representation of women in cinema. This is not to say that farmers’ suicides are not an important issue; rather that good journalism is the art of illuminating the seriousness of an event. Seen in this light, the question is not so much whether Dev Anand’s passing should or should not have found a prominent place in the media, but, rather, the manner in which it has been covered. And, in the most, the coverage has been intelligent and reflective. This issue goes to heart of the making of an intelligent media and the kind of journalism that Justice Katju has in the past wished for. Dev Anand was an important figure in Indian cultural life for a number of reasons. It was not only his on-screen presence that is of significance, but also his activities and utterances beyond the screen; they make him unique among Indian films stars. His personal biography cannot be separated from the public events of his youth, the most significant of which was the Partition. While the Partition bred a great deal of religious bitterness on the part of many, it appears to have influenced the actor in quite an opposite way. He maintained a lifelong commitment to religious tolerance and harmony. My own encounter with this aspect relates to an episode when i was a college student at Delhi University in the late 1970s. Two students at my college, a Hindu boy and a Muslim girl, had become romantically involved and were under great pressure from a number of sources to break off the relationship. Eventually, the couple decided to marry and faced serious threats from the same individuals and groups who had also earlier opposed the relationship. Dev Anand was the only film celebrity who publicly supported the couple, coming to Delhi to show his support and stave off the possibility of harm to the courting duo. Quaint as such acts might now seem, they held considerable symbolic value for young people in the process of developing their own ideas about tolerance and the importance of repudiating bigotry in various forms. In his understanding of such issues, Dev Anand was a quintessential Indian cosmopolitan. It was not for nothing that he was among those who accompanied Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his bus journey to Lahore in 1999. Dev Anand’s film career also has a great deal to tell us about the social and cultural possibilities that were being explored during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. As some commentators have already written, the actor was important in foregrounding the city as a significant aspect of Indian life at a time when romanticised – and ultimately, conservative – images of village life dominated the screen. The cinematic village was built upon colonial ideas about ‘authentic’ India and its ‘village republics’, with happy villagers going about genial lives in genial ways. Dev Anand’s India was one of hybrid cultures of the city with its conmen and hucksters, wheeler-dealers, gamblers and night clubs, taxi drivers and jailbirds, corrupt bureaucracies and, of course, survivors. But just as important as the city, Dev Anand embodied a very specific form of post-colonial masculinity, an understanding of which is crucial to coming to grips with the foundational decades of Indian modernity; the 1950s and the 60s. For all his on-screen cosmopolitanism, Dev Anand represented small-town aspirations – those that are once again being represented in contemporary cinema – to be global. His mannerisms and bodily style were inspirational for (and directed towards) men who did not have access to the educational systems and wealth of the metropolitan elites: the Dev Anand style was an education in modernity, easily acquired and pervasive in its influence. It also embodied a less harmful form of masculinity than that which has become the on-screen norm. ‘Dev Anand’ is the site of significant cultural and social processes over the previous half century, and that is why he belongs on the front pages. It is doubtful that he would have wanted his absence to displace serious issues facing the country, but he would certainly have wanted to be taken seriously. The writer is a professor of sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.

link

[Vijay.Sharma]

If a channel like India TV can be called a news channel' date=' there is definitely something wrong with Indian media.[/quote']India TV...that is the one! I dunno if I shared this incident here before but anyway here goes... About 3 yrs back my whole gang got together in Pune from various parts of the world. We had a gala time...twas around 12:30 when we were thrown out of the restaurant where we had drinks...last customers. Then we all went to a friend's place to crash for the night. One of the guys turned on the TV and said let us watch those TV product ads...sleem sauna belt, etc - it will be full on time pass. So we were browsing thru channels to get to the right one. Ads of "aap ko apni ganje sar ki wajeh se shram aati hai?", sleem fit, etc went by on different channels. Suddenly the guy who was switching channels stopped. And someone from the TV announced in the way they used to announce on Radio ads with full on josh and melodrama. He said, "Paatal lok ke terah darwaze mil gaye!!!!!!" That's it. One of the guys got up and said "we need more booze" and couple of the guys went out to this place called Pyasa in Pune to get the booze. We had the time of our lives that night...whole gang meeting after like 7-8 years and India TV made the night for us

[Vijay.Sharma]

Although I commend his views and desire to be rational and enlightened' date=' he is missing on one important point: [b']The media only shows what people want. There'll be no astrology channels if there was no one who believes it. If a channel suddenly decides to stop showing astrology, it doesn't suddenly create a more rational audience. It'll just lose out in ratings to another channel which does show it. People point to IndiaTV as though its some great tower of media evil. Its only there and famous because of the market demand for such BS. If you banned it, there'd be some other channel that would cater to credulity and backwardness. The problem really isnt with 'the media', its with the views and beliefs of other people. Its the same for fair and lovely: its not creating racism as much as its just harnessing the racism in the population to its advantage.

I dont think that is entirely true. I think that is a myth that the media would like us to believe. I am not referring to India TV or Hindi/other language channels here because I dont even subscribe to them so I wouldnt know much. I am referring to English news channels. Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, etc get away by saying "we show what people want to see". I tried to test that assumption. I believe most of the people who watch NDTV, IBN, Headlines, Times Now, and other English news channels would have needs like mine and will more or less would like to get the kind of info that someone like me and a lot of my colleagues/friends would....the urban educated middle class. Ask yourself if you truly want to see what is happening in Abhishek Bachhan Aishwarya Rai wedding? NDTV spent the whole day outside the wedding even after media was not allowed inside. Ask yourself did you want to see the same Kolkata fire for the whole day today? Ask yourself do you want to know what Hindi words Lady Gaga uttered? Ask yourself did you want to know what Michelle Obama and Barrack Obama had on their menu during the dinner when they were in India? You and I are the end users. We are the market. And the market, I am convinced, would prefer other news items. We have no choice. Even though number of channels have increased the content is homogeneous. Even if one news channel differs in what content they show you will notice the difference in viewership immediately.